WPP - Tabby's Birthday Party

WPP = White People Problems.

So Tabby's birthday is Aug 20 and I've booked a 15 kid party at Imagination Avenue, a genuinely neat kid centric place for them to play and have cake, and generally have a good time. No three year old child has 15 actual friends, and I thought for sure that 15 would be overkill, especially since it's kind of far from our house and we have no relatives in AZ. The more I thought about this the more sure I was that we'd be fine.

As the party slowly approaches, I start counting the kids of the people I would like to invite, and this is now as grisly as the process of making the A and B list for a large wedding, where you invite people from list B as the people from list A send you their regrets, and fret about whose feelings will be hurt because you didn't have enough money to invite the whole world to celebrate a toddler's 3rd birthday.

Nobody tells you about this sort of drama when you are holding a baby or when you're worrying about developmental milestones - parenthood is just as fraught with ridiculous social traps for adults as anything else, and though by now I should have realized it, this is the first birthday we're having outside of our own house. Definitely WPP.

Anyway, the Hello Kitty cake will go over like gangbusters.

TMI - Happy Father's Day

So another Father's Day is upon us and I've got reason to care about it in the last 4 years or so, but prior to that I had a good 25 year span of who gives a shit, or more accurately, bitter bitter nasty who gives a shit. Seeing people posting about their dads being awesome, being teachers, being helpful, or perhaps most affecting - being in heaven - has for some reason really started to take its toll on me.

My dad shot himself in the head leaving four shotgun shells lined up on a motel nightstand like so many unkept promises for my sisters, mom, and I. (side note: who seriously goes through the drive through at Rally's to eat a combo meal less than an hour before killing themselves? Was this done to make the ME's job that much more disgusting? Or is it the self centeredness of having a last meal even if it is fast food?) The Dearborn police got to throw out an assault and battery case I had pending against him when this occurred, and my life was further altered. I didn't have the worst life in the world. I was reminded of this on several occasions in my childhood when I was smugly handed articles from the Detroit News about horrific child abuse cases. Some of these stories still stick with me and I remember the verbiage: "the child, 4, was forced to eat feces" or "broke her bones putting her into the washing machine because he claimed the child was unclean."

You think you have it bad, huh kid, try this on for size.

Anyway, I'm glad he's gone. There's no good facebook copy/paste quote for that. No, "copy and repost if you agree!" I am angry at my dad for being immature, for being so self centered, and for being such a loser. I am also grateful that he's dead because if he'd remained the person that I knew, I would never have allowed him to even look at a picture of my children.

I have had this conversation with many people and for so many reasons I don't think I will ever be able to forgive my father and there is an admittedly sizable part of me that wants to believe in hell so that he has to be there as a consequence for his behavior. Another part of me wants to believe that this was the world's way of making my life easier: by having him remove himself.

In any case, happy fathers day to FATHERS. Men who physically, verbally, sexually, and mentally assault children and their mothers: join my dad in hell.

Find Your Light

This picture is from going to see Sloan for the first time - despite being a long time fan... like 15 years long. About 1 am after the show, I got a CD autographed and had brief conversations with everyone in the band, and as my husband took pictures using his phone, Chris Murphy moved us over to the edge of the stage and positioned us in one of the few lights that remained on while the crew broke down equipment. He looked at John, smiled, and told me "find your light."

It was a moment that I keep returning to, it was a really thoughtful gesture. Not that I was in any way surprised that a Canadian bassist would be polite, thoughtful, and sincere in general - but that after playing shows for 20 years and taking countless pictures with giddy fans there was no sense of "this gets old" or "not again" or anything like that. It's a great thing to do what you love with your life and to have other people enjoy it, benefit from it, and be inspired by it.